Neuro note 3

Even Mild Brain Injuries May Increase Your Chances of Getting Parkinson's, Study Says”

In class, we discussed Parkinson’s disease and how it affects the brain. After listening to one of my peer’s case-study on Muhammad Ali and how PD affected him, I wanted to know more about it. I was interested to know if his PD came from him having some-type of brain deficiency due to the number of blows he had taken to the head, or if it just came naturally. So, I did some research and discovered that people who suffered from even the mildest form of a TBI had a higher chance of having PD; and they especially suffer from they cardinal symptoms bradykinesia and tremors. This got me more intrigued in knowing if PD was more common in athletes or “regular” people. As I surfed the web, I came across this article that literally answered all my never-ending questions.

          According to the article, athletes are more susceptible to PD, due to the fact that they have more TBI’s than the average person. The reading also stated that soldiers had a high chance of getting PD as well, seeing as they suffer from TBI’s just as much. The study did an experiment contrasting people who had developed a traumatic brain injury, vs. people who did not have a TBI. The results showed that people who had a TBI were 83% more likely to have PD than the opposing group. These findings even held true after the researchers accounted for other factors that could affect PD’s development, including substance abuse, illnesses/infections and education level.

          This article was quite interesting to me and really enlightened me! I knew that TBI’s caused certain impairments to the brain and could cause a person to have left neglect, spatial awareness deficiencies, and many other ailments; however I never made the connection that it could be a “gateway” disease and open the door to other impairments. If you would like to read more about it, the link is copied below!

Citation:

Ducharme, J. (2018, April 21). Even Mild Brain Injuries May Increase Your Chances of Getting Parkinson's, Study Says. Retrieved from https://time.com/5249301/traumatic-brain-injuries-parkinsons/